Monday, April 25, 2022

Proposal: Raising the Bar [Core]

Reached quorum 7 votes to 2. Enacted by Kevan.

Adminned at 27 Apr 2022 13:49:59 UTC

In the rule “Victory and Ascension”, replace “Every Memory of Atlantis may cast Votes on that DoV to indicate agreement or disagreement with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.” with:-

A Memory of Atlantis’s vote on a DoV is encouraged to reflect whether or not they agree with the proposition that the poster has achieved victory in the current Dynasty.

Then replace both instances of “It is Popular” in that rule with:

It has a number of FOR Votes greater than 2/3rds of the number of Memories of Atlantis

Then add a bullet point under “may be Failed” in that rule:

* It is more than 48 hours old and cannot be Enacted

The first “encouraged” amendment here is to fix the issue that came up at the end of the last dynasty, where a player was challenged for supporting a DoV that they didn’t technically agree had worked. The “may cast Votes” clause makes it sound like this is defining the only way to vote on a DoV, but the “Votes” rule is where it actually happens, so it’s legal to vote for a DoV you think is flawed: sticking with that, the DoV line should sound less binding.

The second “popular/failed” amendment is to address the blurriness of voting on DoVs. If we accept votes where a player disagrees that the win is valid but wants to allow it (either because they feel it was close enough, or because it’s nowhere near and they’ve had enough of the dynasty), and we also accept votes where an early voter is entirely persuaded that a DoV didn’t work but tactically declines to update their vote to reflect that, and we also accept votes from new players unidling who haven’t been following the game and just want a new dynasty to start… then it’s probably easier than it should be to get a DoV over the line without a majority even agreeing that it worked. (The last dynasty was particularly unusual for ending with one or even zero players believing that the DoV was valid.)

We could try to write a strict rule that insists that everyone votes honestly and changes their vote as soon as they can, and players who missed the dynasty only vote on a DoV if they’ve read the ruleset and agree that the victory worked. But the more elegant solution might just be to slightly raise the bar that a DoV has to clear: this would mean that a few questionable votes didn’t affect the outcome so much, and would automatically move the “well, I can nearly win, shall we say I won?” gambits out into CfJs or proposals where they’d only require a regular and more achievable quorum of support - and where it’s much more obvious that people can vote how they like on them.

Comments

Lulu: she/her

25-04-2022 17:17:50 UTC

Greentick

wdtefv: hu/hum

25-04-2022 17:30:21 UTC

for

Josh: he/they

25-04-2022 18:09:34 UTC

for

Lulu: she/her

25-04-2022 18:31:17 UTC

for

SingularByte: he/him

25-04-2022 19:21:52 UTC

What are the chances that a DoV might fail just because it’s a weekend? The reason I ask is because generally less people are around on weekends, so I could easily imagine a scenario where someone has a fully valid DoV but due to some people being semi-idle and others just not around at the weekend, it would simply fail from lack of votes.
against  for now.

Gozherd:

26-04-2022 07:49:28 UTC

imperial

Clucky: he/him

26-04-2022 18:39:42 UTC

I think if you’re gonna do this, you need a clause that allows someone to retry their DoV if reach a certain threshold.

“There are nine players but two didn’t vote over the weekend so even though the vote was 6-1, you still don’t win” is bad enough. “You now can’t make another DoV for five days” feels even worse.

Another idea to consider would be to go from “2/3rds of the number of Memories of Atlantis” to “2/3rds of the legal votes” (and then also keep the old rules). That way, 6-1 or 5-1 still wins as it probably should.

Raven1207: he/they

26-04-2022 19:22:48 UTC

against

Kevan: he/him

26-04-2022 19:59:38 UTC

I think DoVs usually wake everyone up, and semi-idle players seem as quick as anyone else to vote on them, so I’d be surprised to see one fade away over a weekend.

The DoV retry for timeouts is already there, really, with the “If a DoV is Failed and it had at least one AGAINST vote” clause. We could maybe dial that up to “at least a quorum of AGAINST votes”.

Not sure about the 2/3rds thing, though, as it doesn’t factor in quorum: 5-1 isn’t so obvious a win if there are twenty people playing with 14 yet to cast votes. And last dynasty’s 3-1 victory would also have cleared that bar.

Josh: he/they

26-04-2022 20:31:32 UTC

I think a plurality of AGAINST votes for the DoV lockout, rather than quorum, would be workable.

Josh: he/they

26-04-2022 20:32:26 UTC

I will say that this change is likely to bring about an era of more speculative DoVs, but that might not be a bad thing to play with.

Clucky: he/him

26-04-2022 23:03:50 UTC

@Kevan the idea was to do quorum of players + 2/3rds of votes. So 5-1 with 2 abstains passes. 5-1 with 14 abstains doesn’t.

Kevan: he/him

27-04-2022 08:24:52 UTC

[Josh] Maybe, but all it’s changing is moving the first half of “you don’t actually have to believe in your DoV vote, and you don’t actually have to change your DoV vote if persuaded otherwise” (both legal under the current ruleset) into the light. I think we were already in that era, if everyone playing right now, and over the next few dynasties, remembers that the First Dynasty of Madisonsilver legally ended with at least one “near enough” vote and the DoVer declining to concede, and that the ruleset wasn’t patched as a result, so it’s fine.

[Clucky] So when you’re saying “+”, you’re mean “and” - a DoV would need a quorum of players to vote FOR it, and also 2/3rds of players to have voted either way on it? I don’t think that addresses the problem - even if you require a full 100% of players to cast a vote on a DoV before closing it, it still means that a couple of “near enough” or “I missed that dynasty, can’t wait to play the next one” votes could pass it. Last dynasty’s 3-1 DoV would still have enacted.

GloopyGhost:

27-04-2022 12:26:42 UTC

imperial 2/3 seems like a lot.

Axemabaro:

27-04-2022 13:45:55 UTC

for